No not Fire Emblem 3 on the DS but the 11th new game in the series on the 3DS.

Announcement here, pics here, video here, site here, and criticisms about the bland art, SRW style Support Attacks/Defends, the return of the map, or the complete uncertainty about overseas releases below.

Sorry. Bland art is bland. I hated it when they go with some generic (literally) made-for-TV-anime style. They did it with Castlevania and Star Ocean... and I hated it then. Whatever, hopefully it'll spit out some good RTS fun.

It really isn't just the bland art style that's bugging me on this so much as the fact that up until now it was actually fairly good about keeping things sensible in the character designs (give or take a few concessions like Peg Knights' need to wear thigh high heels and mini skirts despite the lack of protection that any one riding a mount actually needs). Instead they've dropped a fucking lolipop into the middle of a battlefield and the rest of the cast is giving me serious Suikoden Tierkreis flashbacks.

Art gripes aside, the fact that it's a new game not set in Tellus again does actually intrigue me; moreso given the odd changes seen thus far; less so given the fact that there's an overworld map again and the last game to do that was piss easy thanks to grinding (that and everybody rocking ridiculous stat growths).

What Star said. :P It's simply an SRPG. As for the designs, they do seem generic after years of being used to the FE6-8 (and prior) style. But they're not terrible - yet.

I've never played FE games for the look. Or even the story for that matter. I always liked how they had big casts, but most of the characters were actually INTERESTING, especially when you threw in the generation system (FE4/5) and the support conversations (FE6+). And they always provided a challenge... FE7 aside. I'm not sure how I feel about how it looks so far, but we haven't seen much. Now just come out West and I'd buy a 3DS in a heartbeat.

Graphics are more important than the gameplay? You need to get yourselves checked if you think this way.

It's more of the fact that we so far don't have that much information on the mechanics of the game beyond what was shown in the trailers and pictures. We do know that there will be support attacks and defense but we don't know what they run off of or if enemies can utilize them or if they're just a gimmick to reinforce the illusion of the 3D's depth by sticking three objects at varying ranges against a background. We do know that we're on a new continent (which thankfully means no fucking Laguz) but we don't know if there are any new gimmick races taking the Laguz's place or not. We do know that skills are back, but we don't know if they resemble FE9/10's skills, Tear Ring Saga's skills, or FE8's "skills". We don't know what support method they're using this time. We don't know why the Jeigan is shown wielding Axes like a Great Knight rather than a Paladin. We don't even know if there will be multiple parties or not like in FE2 despite the presence of a map.

That said, we do know that the lolipop princess/staff chick is THE most ridiculously designed character in the entire series (wtf is that thing on her head supposed to be) barring any other surprises. The rest of the cast isn't nearly as bad but invoking Suikoden Tierkreis flashbacks just reminds me that Suki DS was not a good game.

Also as stoked as I am over the 'new FE' news the whole 'FEDS2 not coming over or any other decent Wii/DS RPG for that matter' thing isn't motivating me very much either; in fact it's doing the opposite so far. Even with the 3DS's current lack of original quality software I can no longer believe that this game will leave Japan with any certainty.

A couple of things are now confirmable thanks to the new video including the presence of supports (don't know if they're GBA style or in the style of either 9 or 10 yet, but they are there and conveniently viewable outside of menus too; 0:09), skills (with even greater flexibility than in 10; 0:46), and most importantly a release date (April 19 in JP; 1:36). Also there's voice acting and DLC which is probably going to be retarded crap or less so with map packs or extra scenarios (or perhaps something ridiculously awesome like an older game like FE2 getting ported in a similar way that FEDS2 included BSFE but the odds of this are practically nil).

I do feel a little bit better about the odds that this game will make it out of Japan now that Xenoblade got a confirmed but I still wouldn't bet on it now due to the presence of VAing which always presents an obstacle to localization.

Additionally I still don't care for the character designs and the VAing just makes it worse.

Holy shit, I don't think I've ever seen something involving swords, dragons and magic massiles be presented in such a boring way. It probably isn't a good idea to market your games by finding someone to talk about them as if they were some sort of scientific discovery.